10 Freed Men Fuel Death Penalty Debate

April 30, 1989|By Constance Johnson of The Sentinel Staff

James Richardson knew how he would die.

At 7 a.m. he would be led from his cell to the death house and strapped into a wooden chair. Two-thousand volts of electricity would shoot through his body, singeing the flesh on his clean-shaven head and his lower left calf where electrodes would be attached, before penetrating his heart.

He said he watched them build his casket. ''You could feel the taste of death on your tongue.''

But Richardson didn't die. He is a free man after 21 years in prison. Five of those years were spent on Florida's death row.

Last week a judge ruled that the former farm worker, who was accused of poisoning his seven children, did not get a fair trial. The state will decide within two weeks whether or not to prosecute Richardson again.

For now, however, he joins 10 other people in the past decade who were arrested, charged and sentenced to die in Florida, then released because of their innocence or errors in the legal proceedings, criminologist Michael Radelet said.

And 26 years after they were charged with the slayings of two gas-station attendants and 14 years after they were released from prison, Wilbert Lee and Freddie Lee Pitts have become synonymous with death row and freedom in Florida.

Lee and Pitts were on death row at Florida State Prison near Starke at the same time as Richardson. Lee said he remembers Richardson sobbing frequently, crying out his innocence.

But Florida isn't the only state where innocent men have been sent to death row and later freed.

Randall Dale Adams made national headlines last month when he was released from a Texas prison after serving 12 years, three of them on death row. Adams' case was the subject of a movie documentary, The Thin Blue Line.

Regardless of where they spent their years on death row, those people share many things in common, said Radelet, a sociology professor with the University of Florida.

They are all men sharing a struggle to readjust to freedom, bitterness toward the criminal justice system, a fight for compensation, a reluctance on the part of the people who prosecuted them to admit that they are innocent, celebrity status, and incredible luck, Radelet said.

''These guys are just lucky. It wasn't the system working that set them free,'' Radelet said. ''With Randall Dale Adams it was Hollywood that came riding in - not the system; with Richardson it was attorney Mark Lane. . . .''

Explaining the mentality that kept Richardson and others behind bars, Radelet, apologizing for his choice of words, said, ''Richardson was just another nigger on death row.''

Such cases inevitably raise a debate over the death penalty. Radelet and many of the men who survive death row say their cases illustrate why the death penalty should be outlawed.

But Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and others insist that the system works and that the men's freedom attests to that.

''When you have a case, such as Richardson, who did not receive a fair trial, or a case such as Randall Dale Adams, who was innocent, then the system works . . . ,'' Butterworth said. ''There are checks and balances to make sure it works.''

Volusia County State Attorney John Tanner, whose prayer meetings with serial killer Ted Bundy raised eyebrows, said the system is imperfect but that it's the best available. Bundy was executed in January.

''Occasionally innocent people are convicted, but more often guilty people are acquitted,'' Tanner said. ''I believe the beneficial effects outweigh the negative effects.''

Radelet and others disagree.

''The system doesn't work,'' he said. ''Had the system worked these men would be dead. . . . The judicial system doesn't like to admit blunders. In the Richardson case they're looking for some excuse to cut the guy loose without admitting the state prosecuted an innocent man.''

Delbert Tibbs, 49, who spent 2 years on Florida's death row in the mid- 1970s for rape and murder he says he didn't commit, agrees that the system isn't perfect. But Tibbs, who has been out of prison for 12 years, said he has gotten used to imperfections. He is free, but it's a freedom tainted by his past imprisonment.

Tibbs works as a security guard for the Chicago Board of Education. He attended the Chicago Theological Seminary at the University of Chicago before his hitchhiking trip across America brought him to Florida and eventually, a murder and rape charge and death row.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that Tibbs should have another trial, but prosecutors dropped the charges in 1982, saying that their only witness, the rape victim, lacked credibility.

''It's something that will be with me for the rest of my life,'' Tibbs said. ''I'm sure if I wasn't an ex-con I'd have a better job. I'm in a job that's below my capabilities.''

Randall Dale Adams

Hollywood made a movie about Randall Dale Adams. The movie got nominated for an Academy Award. Adams got out of prison.